Research conducted by Mozilla shows that YouTube's algorithm recommends videos that viewers wish they hadn't seen, while at times prompting users to watch videos that violate the company's policies on inappropriate content.
Mozilla asked Firefox browser users to install a browser extension called “RegretsReporter ,” which tracked the YouTube videos they watched and asked them if they regretted watching each one.
Notably, between July 2020 and May 2021, 37,380 users flagged 3,362 videos they had watched as “regrettable” – about 1% of all videos they watched. Such reports were highest in Brazil, with about 22 videos per 10,000 views being flagged as “regrettable.”
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Mozilla researchers then reviewed the reported videos and reviewed them against YouTube's content guidelines. As part of this process, they found that 12.2% of the reported videos either shouldn't even be on YouTube or shouldn't be recommended by its algorithm, the company's researchers said.
In addition, about a fifth of the videos reported fell under what YouTube's rules call "misinformation," and another 12 percent spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers added. Other issues highlighted in the study included violent or graphic content and hate speech promoted by the popular platform.
Brandi Guerkink from Mozilla Germany said: "Some of our findings, if scaled up to the size of YouTube's user base, could raise significant questions and that would be really worrying. What we found is just the tip of the iceberg."
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Most of the controversial videos were shown to users through YouTube's algorithm, which suggests videos from channels a user may not follow or have never searched for.
According to reports, videos that did not use the English language were 60% more likely to be reported as "unpleasant", which researchers believe is due to the fact that YouTube's algorithms are trained primarily on English-language videos.
Savvas Zannettou from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany pointed out: “This highlights the need to tailor supervision decisions by country and ensure that YouTube has dedicated moderators who know what is happening in each country.”
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Additionally, Guerkink noted that YouTube's lack of transparency about its algorithm is "unacceptable," especially after years of research that has raised concerns about its impact on society.
On the other hand, a YouTube spokesperson said: “The goal of our recommendation system is to connect viewers with content they love, and on any given day, more than 200 million videos are recommended on the homepage alone.” The company also added that it made changes to its recommendation system last yearthat reduced “borderline content” to less than 1% of videos.
